Black men slower to seek prostate cancer treatment

5:45 PM,
Apr. 7, 2013

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Written by

Robert Preidt | HealthDay

Black men wait about a week longer than whites between receiving a prostate cancer diagnosis and starting treatment, a new study finds.

Researchers analyzed Medicare data from about 2,500 black men and 21,400 white men who were diagnosed with early prostate cancer between 2004 and 2007. Overall, black patients waited an average of seven days longer to begin treatment than whites, they found.

The gap was even longer, nine days, for black patients with aggressive prostate cancer, according to the University of North Carolina (UNC) study published online March 28 in the journal Cancer. ...